Name: Melinda Frater
Job: A reporter for America’s Women Weekly
Birth date: 7/12/1909
General information: My husband left for the war and I don’t know when he’s going to come home.
Tyler Deresky
10/22/08
America’s Women in the Industry

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The Great Depression only brought so many hard times and now many families are trying to forget it and leave it behind us. World War II is upon us now and many women are finding that they’re husband’s are going off to War to fight for our country (Anderson 47). Because America pretty much entered itself into the war overnight, war productions needed to be ready and quick. America needed to produce planes, tanks, ships, and weapons not only for itself but to sell to other ally countries in the world (Gregory 21). Since many men are leaving to fight, a countless number of open jobs have become available. In 1944 18 million workers were laboring in war industries, even with the draft. This is three times as many people in 1941 (Wilson 565). More than six million of these new workers are women. In the beginning, a lot of war industries were afraid to hire women because they thought that women couldn’t do all the things men could as good. It only took a short period of time for the working women to prove them wrong. Eventually, women were being preferred over men as they produced the same quality but women were only paid 60 percent as much as men were (Wilson 565).
In today’s world many women have the same jobs as men and sometimes do it better or get paid more than men. The women working during World War II set a standard for today that showed that they could work as well as men can, and this is why today women are looked at more equally compared to men.


Works Cited
Anderson, Karen. Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II. Berkley Books, New York: 2001.
Gregory, Chester. Women in Defense Work during World War II: An Analysis of the Labor Problem and Women’s Rights. Exposition Press, New York: 1974.
Wilson, Lewis, Woloch, Nancy et al. The Americans. McDougal Little Inc. 2003.